


A Matter of Perspective

by dragonashes



Series: Quintessence: Undertale One-shots [25]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Allusions to an ominous future, Everyone Needs A Hug, Gen, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Spoilers - Undertale Pacifist Route
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-08
Updated: 2017-06-08
Packaged: 2018-11-10 20:50:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11134470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonashes/pseuds/dragonashes
Summary: Frisk has done it!  She's freed monsters, agreed to be their ambassador, and watched her friends walk off.There's just one major problem....Why aren't the humans paying any attention to her new friends?





	A Matter of Perspective

Frisk blinked away tears at the sight of the sunset.  It was not so much because of its beauty (though it was a fantastic sunset) or because she thought she’d never see it again (though it was nice to be out of the caves).  No; she was tearing up because she’d been  _ underground _ for  _ days _ \- much, much longer if one counted all the LOADs - and it was  _ bright. _  Even the golden light of the hallway where Sans judged her had been painful, and the sun was so much more intense.

“My child?”  Toriel was standing nearby, the corners of her mouth pulled down in worry.  “Are you alright?”

“Y-yeah.  It’s just bright.”

“I see.  I suppose a change in ambient light is something monsters do not worry about so much, being mostly magic.  Is it that painful for you?”

“It’ll get better in a minute.  I just need to not look right at the sun.”

“...I see.”

Frisk was pretty sure Toriel didn’t quite understand, but that was okay.  She was trying.  “Should we, uh, try to catch up with everyone else?”

“That sounds wonderful, my child.  You are our ambassador, after all; it wouldn’t be proper to greet humanity after so long without our representative!”

Together, the pair made their way down the steep hill.  Toriel had tried to lead at first, the way she had led Frisk through the Ruins, but she quickly realized that she had no idea where the paths were.  The wear and tear of a few hundred years had made a difference on the face of Mt. Ebott.  Frisk wasn’t much better off, having only been to the mountain once, but her memory was fresher.

It took them much longer than they expected to get to the road at the base of the mountain, and there were no other monsters in sight.  Frisk tried calling Papyrus - as he was probably leading the charge into the human city - but either her signal was too weak or he just wasn’t answering.  She left him a voicemail anyways, asking him to call her back.

At least the road signs were helpful.  It was harder to see the human city from ground level, but the road seemed to lead there in a more or less straight fashion.  “Ebott City,” it was apparently called.  A fitting name.

It was dark by the time they arrived at the outskirts of town.  There were lights on in the homes they walked past, little flickers of life in the concrete jungle.  Ebott City was so big - bigger than the whole Underground, Frisk thought - and there were  _ so many people! _  She hadn’t noticed it before.  Even from the few people out on the streets after dark, it was easy to tell that Ebott City was much more densely populated than even New Home.

Suddenly, Papyrus burst out from a bush in a nearby front yard.  “HUMAN FRISK!  THERE YOU ARE!  AND THE ASGORE CLONE!”

“It’s Toriel, dear-”

“WE ARE LOST, I THINK!”

“O-oh.”  Toriel glanced around for whoever was with him to justify the use of ‘we,’ but the street appeared empty aside from them.  “Where are Sans and Undyne, Papyrus?”

“THEY THOUGHT IT WOULD BE A GOOD IDEA TO SPLIT UP AND LOOK FOR HUMANS!  THEY ALL SEEM TO BE INSIDE THEIR HOMES, BUT WHEN I KNOCK NO ONE ANSWERS!”

“Oh, dear.  I was afraid of this.”

Frisk looked up.  “What’s wrong, Mom?  Is something happening?”

Toriel sighed.  “Let us continue for a while.  I’m not sure if I’m right or not, but...well, we shall find out soon enough.”

She nodded, hesitantly.  Her mom knew best.

“We should focus on locating the others.  I believe the three of us, Sans, Undyne, Alphys, and….Asgore...are the only ones who left the Underground.  Word was spreading that the barrier fell, but there was no coordinated effort to help people leave.”

“WHY NOT, AS...I MEAN, TORIEL?”

“Because the king is a…”  Toriel looked down at Frisk, who was watching her intently.  “Because the king did not start one.”

He gasped dramatically and began chattering on about something - the Royal Guard, if Frisk heard correctly - but she wasn’t paying attention.  What had her mom been about to say?  She knew her mom and Asgore didn’t get along, but...it seemed like he  _ wanted _ to.  After all, when Frisk had tried to leave the Underground the first time, he had offered to be a family, right?  He had said that he and his wife would take care of Frisk.  Was that possible if her mom didn’t want to be a family anymore?

Her hand tightened around Toriel’s.

“Regardless,” the boss monster continued, “It is imperative that we meet up with the others as soon as possible.  It will become harder to find each other in the dark.”

“RIGHT YOU ARE, TORIEL!  I, THE GREAT PAPYRUS, SHALL LEAD THE WAY!  I HAVE A GOOD FEELING ABOUT THIS DIRECTION!  I SUSPECT MY LAZY BROTHER MAY BE OVER HERE!”

And lead the way he did.

As they left the sleepy neighborhood, Frisk wondered why none of the humans had paid Papyrus any attention at all.  He was yelling at the top of his...well, not his lungs, but he was being really loud.  A tall, loud skeleton seemed like something most people would, y’know, notice.

Well, it didn’t matter, really!  Frisk was with Toriel and Papyrus, her new mom and her coolest friend.  What could possibly go wrong?

“AHA!”  her coolest friend yelled, pointing dramatically towards a playground.  “I SUSPECT MY BROTHER HAS TAKEN OVER THE CHILD PLAY EQUIPMENT!  TORIEL?  HUMAN FRISK?  PLEASE HELP ME SEARCH FOR HIM!”

“Sure thing, Pap!”  Frisk said, slipping her hand out of her mother’s.  The uncomfortable feeling that something was wrong had grown into an unpleasant tug, and she wanted to do something.

Sans, per expectations, was in the very last place anyone thought to look: the inside a tunnel in the play fort.  Frisk had almost walked right past him, not feeling up to crawling through all the tunnels, but caught a glimpse of his shoe out of the corner of her eye.  She tried to drag him out, but he just laid there, grinning and making silly playground puns.  (She hadn’t realized that there were so many playground puns, or that he knew them; he usually only made skeleton puns.  Truly, he was a skeleton of a many of surprising talents.)

Papyrus solved the dilemma by pulling his brother out by his legs and tucking him under one arm.  When he did so, he got another surprise.

“DR. ALPHYS?  WHAT WERE YOU DOING WITH SANS IN THE PLAY TUNNEL?”

“Oh.  I-I didn’t see anyone else, and I didn’t...didn’t want to go off on my own.  Actually, have you, um, seen Undyne?  She walked...a bit too quickly for me.”

“WE HAVE NOT SEEN HER YET, BUT WE ARE ON A GRAND ADVENTURE TO FIND ALL OUR MISSING FRIENDS AND LOVED ONES!”

Alphys blushed.  Toriel scowled.  Sans and Frisk gave him a thumbs-up.

“YOU ARE WELCOME TO JOIN US!”

Alphys, for lack of anything better to do, did join them.  Papyrus seemed a little less interested now that Sans was found, and let Toriel take the lead.  Her method of ‘leading,’ Frisk noted, seemed to consist of herding everyone between the brightly-lit sections of sidewalk with an air of trepidation and reluctance.

“O-oh!”  Alphys snapped her fingers.  “I just re-remembered.  I have the king’s, um, cell phone number.  Y-you know, since I was, um, the Royal Scientist.  Until, um, recently.”

Toriel stiffened at the reminder of just why their small friend was no longer the Royal Scientist.  “I see.  That is useful.  Can you call him, Alphys?  It would be better if we were all together, I suppose.”

To Frisk’s surprise, Asgore picked up on the second ring.  It was good to know that he was safe - and with Undyne, apparently - but he wasn’t much help.  He didn’t remember how he had gotten to where he was, wasn’t very good at describing his surroundings, and kept having to jog after an overexcited Undyne who thought she had seen the other group.  Or something to attack.  Or a friendly human.  Or a dog.

After some time, Toriel took over.  After a very short, very tense conversation consisting mostly of “yes,” “no,” and “Do you see…” on Toriel’s part, the groups managed to meet up.  Asgore was still looking as pristinely regal as always, but Undyne…

“WHAT HAPPENED, UNDYNE?”  Papyrus screamed, gesturing at the cuts and scrapes that the Captain of the Royal Guard had accumulated.  “I THOUGHT YOU WERE JUST WALKING?”

Undyne laughed.  “I was!  Then I saw THE TALLEST BUILDING EVER!  CLEARLY, I had to CLIMB IT!  With PASSION!”

Sans guffawed.  “what’d ya do, fall off?”

“NO!  I JUMPED!  AND LANDED IN A BUSH!”  She roared a challenge to all tall buildings in the area.

Frisk thought she felt them shudder in fear.  “But Undyne, didn’t anyone see you?”

The captain stiffened.  “You know...actually...no??  HEY!!  HUMANS!!  WHY ARE YOU IGNORING US???”

A human man hurried along the sidewalk towards them.  To Frisk’s surprise, he gave no indication that he’d heard Undyne’s screams.  Instead, he looked at the human child - standing just outside the circle of her friends - and scowled.  “Better get home, kid,” he grumbled.  “Storm’s comin’.”

He proceeded down the sidewalk and around the corner, sidestepping the monsters but not glancing at them.

“Um...Mom?  What…?”

“NGAAAAAH!!  WHAT IS GOING ON???”

“I was afraid of this,” Toriel sighed.  “It appears that we are simply not visible - or audible, I suppose - to humans.”

Silence greeted this proclamation.

Then Undyne and Papyrus began screaming in an apparent effort to make enough noise that the humans would  _ finally _ hear them.  Toriel and Asgore stepped to the side away from the chaos and began their own quiet, tense conversation; neither of them seemed particularly surprised.  Alphys did, though, and she was obviously eavesdropping in an attempt to get up to speed.

Sans had wriggled out of his brother’s grip and shuffled over to Frisk.  “so.  this is an interesting  _ turn _ of events,” he said, gesturing to the bend in the sidewalk.

“Yes.  Yes, it is,” she said.  She wasn’t quite able to keep the smile off her face.

“i guess we’ll have to  _ see _ what’s up.”

“SANS, NO!!”  Papyrus yelled.  Undyne was cackling madly beside him.

“sans, yes,” the smaller skeleton grinned.  “hey, hey, i guess you’re now my invisi-bro.”

“THIS IS THE WORST DAY OF MY LIFE!!!”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I'm sorry this ends rather abruptly, but that was where my inspiration ended.
> 
> Apologies for the irregular posts lately. I'm still working on a pair of stories (three now, really) as inspiration hits. I also have a dearth of one-shots in my queue to post, so that's an issue. That said, I should be starting posts of the shorter of my longer stories soon. It's sad, but I'm trying to wrangle it so it ends on a happy note. :-)


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